The young Rolling Stones in the mid-1960s brought plenty of “attitude” to their music. From left: Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts.

Did one rock ’n roll song of the mid-1960s provide a kind of social dividing line — a musical bright line separating old and new? Did one song lay down, in a popular way, a kind of generational and values demarcation?

Certainly there were any number of songs at that time heralding the new generation’s outlook and values — in lyrics, distinctive sound, and in some cases, musical “attitude.”

Bob Dylan, for one — the leading tr0ubadour of the 1960s — had begun offering his interpretations by the early 1960s. His “Blowin` in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A Changin`” were much in the air by 1963.

Music Player“Satisfaction”-1965[scroll down for lyrics]

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But in May 1965, a young British rock group named the Rolling Stones recorded a rock song called “Satisfaction”– also known by its longer title, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” By July 1965, “Satisfaction” had been released in the U.S. and soon became a gigantic hit. This song, however, was something more than merely good rock `n roll. In its way, and perhaps in a more popular mainstream sense, “Satisfaction” became the pop/rock equivalent of what Dylan and other folk/protest musicians were offering to somewhat less mainstream audiences. “Satisfaction” was a hard-rock tune with a driving sound, but with lyrics that were also aimed at the status quo; a song that expressed a distinct “dis-satisfaction” with the way things were.

Sample record sleeve from 1965 for the Rolling Stones’ song “Satisfaction,” with B-side title, “The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man,” Decca Records.

The Rolling Stones had formed their band in the early 1960s playing mostly cover versions of American rhythm and blues(R&B) music and Chicago blues and rock n’ roll artists, including Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, and others. Their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, a former Beatles publicist, later encouraged the Stones to write their own pop songs as the Beatles were doing. Brian Jones, a talented guitarist who had once led the group and would later die in a drowning accident, preferred the R & B path. But lead singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards soon began writing pop rock ‘n roll songs, taking the group in what would prove to be a very successful direction. “Satisfaction” would become their landmark hit; their big breakthrough.

The Song

Keith Richards played a key inventor’s role with this song. In early May 1965, as the Rolling Stones were on tour in the U.S., it was Richards who came up with “Satisfaction’s” opening guitar riff — the distinctive, flat-sounding twang that powers the song throughout and its signature sound. Story has it that Richards woke up in the middle of the night during the U.S. tour and recorded the guitar riff into a tape recorder that he kept at his bedside for unexpected moments of inspiration. Then he went back to sleep. Next morning he played the riff for Mick Jagger, offering one lyric he had in mind for the song – “I can’t get no satisfaction.” Jagger would later say he thought that line was possibly influenced subconsciously by Richards’ listening to a 1955 Chuck Berry song titled “30 Days,” a tune which has a similar line – “I don’t get no satisfaction from the judge”. The guitar riff developed by Richards in any case, was initially not set for guitar, but thought as a guide for horns. Jagger, meanwhile, fleshed out more of “Satisfaction’s” lyrics one afternoon while on tour, later admitting to incorporating some of his own feelings at the time about the media and advertising.

“Satisfaction”Rolling Stones-1965

I can’t get no satisfaction,
I can’t get no satisfaction.
‘Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.
I can’t get no, I can’t get no.

When I’m drivin’ in my car
and that man comes on the radio
and he’s tellin’ me more and more
about some useless information
supposed to drive my imagination.
I can’t get no, oh no no no.
Hey hey hey, that’s what I say.

(repeat refrain)
…I can’t get no satisfaction,
I can’t get no satisfaction.
‘Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.
I can’t get no, I can’t get no.

When I’m watchin’ my TV
and a man comes on to tell me
how white my shirts can be.
Well he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t
smoke the same cigarettes as me.
I can’t get no, oh, no no no.
Hey hey hey, that’s what I say.

I can’t get no satisfaction,
I can’t get no girl reaction.
‘Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.
I can’t get no, I can’t get no.

When I’m ridin’ round the world
and I’m doin’ this and I’m signing that
and I’m tryin’ to make some girl
who tells me baby better come back
later next week
’cause you see I’m on a losing streak.
I can’t get no, oh no no no.
Hey hey hey, that’s what I say.

I can’t get no, I can’t get no,
I can’t get no satisfaction,
no satisfaction, no satisfaction,
no satisfaction….

The Stones, still on tour in the U.S. at the time, continued to work on the song between performances. In Chicago, they took it into the Chess recording studios, working on it there May 10, 1965. Two days later in Los Angeles, California, they completed it during a long session at RCA’s studios. It was in this session that Richards reportedly rigged up a version of a “fuzz box” to his guitar which gave the opening riff he’d invented its distinctive sound, helping send “Satisfaction” straight up the charts.

In that summer of 1965, there was no shortage of rock ‘n roll music. New songs were coming from all directions – Detroit’s Motown, the California surf scene, and a wave of new British artists. Among the tunes at or near the top of the charts that summer were songs such as: “Help Me, Rhonda” by The Beach Boys, “Mr. Tambourine Man” by The Byrds, and “I Got You Babe” by Sonny & Cher. But “Satisfaction” was different; the song stood out and apart. It had something about it that made it more than just a song. Though it was certainly musically appealing to the youth of that day, “Satisfaction” was also music with a message.

A share of popular and folk music by then had begun to take a more serious and cynical tack. Bob Dylan, as mentioned earlier, was having a profound influence, not only in folk and protest music, but also in mainstream rock `n roll. Dylan’s songs in 1962-1965, such as: “Blowin’ in The Wind,” “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall“, “Masters of War,” and “The Times They Are A-Changin`,” as well as songs by other protest songwriters, had opened a new window for 1960s’ music, bringing social commentary to song writing. The Rolling Stones and other groups at that time were greatly influenced by Dylan’s music. And “Satisfaction” – though not a protest song per se – was clearly one of those songs that had picked up on the idea of adding some “message” to the music.

Although the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement were both underway by mid-1965, “Satisfaction” was not a song aimed at those troubles per se. Rather, “Satisfaction” at the time was more of a general angst tune; a song that captured the frustrations bubbling up with the younger generation on a number of fronts, Vietnam and civil rights included. Conventional wisdom and social values were then being challenged all around and “Satisfaction” chimed in with lyrics aimed at superficial advertising and uptight sexual mores.“Satisfaction” had enough attitude and swagger to wilt any set of established values its listeners might target. It became an all- purpose anti-etablishment anthem.

The plea of the narrator/singer in this song is a guy who is frustrated with the “useless information” and advertising hype he hears on radio and TV, plus his own personal plight of not being able to score with the ladies. The guy is essentially throwing up his hands in frustration with life in general: he just isn’t getting any satisfaction on any level. Millions of young people then were trying to make their way in the world, and many weren’t happy or “satisfied” with what they saw around them.

The song’s lyrics, for their day, were controversial, in part, because they challenged the prevailing cultural mores. Perceived as an attack on the status quo, the song could be threatening to older listeners. “Satisfaction” offered plenty of attitude – not only in its lyrics, but also in its sound and the way the Stones delivered the song. “Satisfaction,” in fact, had enough attitude and swagger to wilt any set of established values its listeners might choose to target. It became an all-purpose, anti-establishment anthem with broad applicability. The song was a good fit for its times and audience.

For the Rolling Stones, “Satisfaction” proved to be the breakthrough song; the one that set them apart and sent them on their way toward superstardom. The group performed “Satisfaction” on American TV even before the single was released in the States. On May 20, 1965, they appeared on the ABC show Shindig! from Los Angeles. “Satisfaction” was released as a U.S. single by London Records on June 6th,1965, with another somewhat obscure song on its B-side, “The Under-Assistant West Coast Promotion Man.” The Stones were then touring in the U.S., the third time they’d been to the States. But at the time they were still a new group to many in America. As part of this tour, for example, on May 4th, 1965, they performed at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia. On June 5, 1965 they played to about 3,000 people at Jack Russell Stadium in Clearwater, Florida. “Satisfaction,” meanwhile, had entered the Billboard Hot 100 that week and rose to No. 1 by July 10th, displacing The Four Tops’ “I Can’t Help Myself.” The song was also featured on the Rolling Stones’ third U.K. album, Out of Our Heads, also released in the U.S. in July 1965.

Keith Richards & Brian Jones comparing guitar licks,1960s.

Glenn Gass, a professor at the School of Music at Indiana University, told ABC News decades later on the 45th anniversary of “Satisfaction,” that although there were many great songs that year from groups such as the Beach Boys, Sonny & Cher, the Byrds, the Four Tops and others, “Satisfaction” nonetheless “claimed that summer.” The song held the top spot on the record charts for four weeks until August 7, 1965, when another English band, Herman’s Hermits, hit No. 1 with their tune, “I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am.” Still, “Satisfaction” remained on the Billboard charts for 14 weeks. The song sold 500,000 copies in its first eight weeks, giving the Stones their first official gold record award by the Recording Industry Association of America. The song also put the Stones on the path to “Beatles-level” popularity. “They were already going strong,” said Indiana University’s Gass of the Stones’ growing popularity then, “but that song put them in the Beatles’ stratosphere of rarified air.”“…It was the song that really made the Rolling Stones, changed us from just another band into a huge, monster band…”
– Mick Jagger Mick Jagger himself would later acknowledge much the same in a 1995 interview with Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine:

“…It was the song that really made the Rolling Stones, changed us from just another band into a huge, monster band. You always need one song. We weren’t American, and America was a big thing and we always wanted to make it here. It was very impressive the way that song and the popularity of the band became a worldwide thing. It’s a signature tune, really,…a kind of signature that everyone knows. It has a very catchy title. It has a very catchy guitar riff. It has a great guitar sound, which was original at that time. And it captures a spirit of the times, which is very important in those kinds of songs… Which was alienation. Or it’s a bit more than that, maybe, but a kind of sexual alienation. Alienation’s not quite the right word, but it’s one word that would do.”

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in 1967, two years after “Satisfaction” was released.

“Satisfaction” did, however, in the mid-1960s, tread upon sensitive ground with its lyrics suggesting frustrated adolescent sexuality — i.e., not getting any “girl reaction” – interpreted by some listeners and radio programmers as meaning a girl willing to have sex. In fact, when the Rolling Stones performed the song on the TV show Shindig! in 1965, the line “trying to make some girl” was censored. And again, when they performed it later on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1966 the same line – “trying to make some girl”– was not used.

“Satisfaction” also put rock music, and the Rolling Stones, on something of a more raucous, more bawdy, harder-edge path – a distinction some would later draw in comparisons to the Beatles. The Beatles, of course, had just been through their 1964-1965 “Beatlemania” period with a phenomenal run of pop hits and lots of “yeah, yeah, yeah.” The Stones, on the other hand, were coming on with a little different sound; providing music that had more of an R&B- and blues-tinge to it. “Satisfaction” was a “great ‘no’ to the Beatles’ ‘yeah’,” offered Glenn Gass from Indiana University in a 2010 interview with ABC News at the song’s 45th anniversary. Others, including writer Tom Wolfe, would go farther. “The Beatles,” he once famously wrote, “just want to hold your hand. The Rolling Stones want to burn your town down” – an exaggeration, of course, but the message was plain.

Ed Sullivan talking with Mick Jagger; Keith Richards in background, at another, later show rehearsal, January 15, 1967.

But it wasn’t just the Stones who were supplying that harder edge to rock music. In 1964 there had also been bluesy songs like the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun,” and even the Beatles did their raucous cover of “Twist and Shout” that year. The Stones themselves also had the bluesy 1964 hit, “Time is On My Side,” which rose to No. 6 that November. Bob Dylan, meanwhile, had “Like A Rolling Stone” in the summer of 1965, a landmark message song. Still, “Satisfaction” grabbed center-stage attention at the time, appealing to mainstream rock audiences in a new way. It was a distinctive turn. After 1965-1966, of course, the music would change again, and the change would escalate, with much more innovation, new sounds, and good music to come – from the Stones, Dylan, the Beatles, and many others.

The Stones, for their part, would follow “Satisfaction” with a long list of other 1960s’ hits, such as: “Get Off My Cloud” and “As Tears Go By” in 1965; “Paint it Black” and “19th Nervous Breakdown” in 1966; “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and “Ruby Tuesday” in 1967; “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Street Fighting Man” in 1968; “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Honky Tonk Woman” in 1969, and many more. The Stones, in fact, were just getting started in the 1960s, with about four more decades of music-making and performing ahead of them. “Satisfaction,” meanwhile, would experience a spike in sales after being heard in movies such as Apocalypse Now in 1979 or Starman of 1994, as well as during and after the Stone’s many concert tours.

In November 2004, Rolling Stone magazine put “Satisfaction” at No. 2 among its ‘500 Greatest’ songs.

Over the years, “Satisfaction” has been accorded high honors in the pantheon of rock `n roll. The song has been noted in various “top 100 lists” by Vox, BMI , VH1, MTV, Q magazine and other media and rock music venues. Newsweek once called the song’s opening guitar riff, “five notes that shook the world.” In November 2004, Rolling Stone magazine placed the song at No. 2 on its list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”– second only to Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”. In 2006, “Satisfaction” was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry, songs deemed to be among those that are culturally and/or historically significant.

Other stories at this website on the Rolling Stones, their music, and business history include, for example, “Paint It Black” (song history & subsequent uses); “Stones Gather Dollars” (how the Rolling Stones helped develop a lucrative concert touring model); “Start Me Up” (Bill Gates & Windows 95 theme song), and “Shine A Light, 2008” (Rolling Stones film trailer). Additional story choices on other topics at this website may be found on the Home Page or in the Archive. Thanks for visiting — and if you like what you see here, please consider supporting this website. Thank you. — Jack Doyle

July 2, 1963: Bob Dylan at civil rights gathering in Greenwood, Mississippi singing ‘Only a Pawn in Their Game,’ a song about the murder of activist Medgar Evers.

In the summer of 1963, the civil rights movement in the United States was coming to a head. There had already been eight years of activism in the south, beginning with the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, where a young preacher named Martin Luther King began to emerge as a leader. In 1957, the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas had begun.

In the early 1960s, lunch counter sit-ins challenging “whites only” serving policies at drug stores and restaurants began to get national notice after small groups of black activists in Greensboro, North Carolina and college students in Nashville, Tennessee conducted such protests in their towns. In 1961, hundreds of black and white “freedom riders” were drawn to the south to test federal requirements for desegregating interstate bus travel. By then as well, a few black students, for the first time, had gained admission to the universities of Alabama and Georgia. Blacks across the south and elsewhere were finding they could act to change their world. Medgar Evers, of Decatur Mississippi, in his mid-30s by that time, was one of those who became committed to action.

Meanwhile, a world away in New York’s Greenwhich Village, a new, young singer named Bob Dylan had been playing coffee houses and recording new folk music along with old blues. Some of his songs would turn toward civil rights matters. More on Dylan in a moment.

Medgar Evers, 1963.

Back in Mississippi, Medgar Evers would become one of the rising young leaders in the state’s civil rights movement. In the 1940s, he had dropped out of high school at the age of 17, joined the army and fought in Europe during WWII, completing his service honorably in 1945. But when Evers returned home, he was prevented from voting in elections, and was also intimidated by a mob of white men. He vowed then to work for change. By 1952, he graduated from Alcorn State University and married a classmate Myrlie Beasley.

“Only a Pawn
in Their Game”1963

A bullet from the back of a bush
took Medgar Evers’ blood.
A finger fired the trigger to his name.
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man’s brain
But he can’t be blamed
He’s only a pawn in their game.

A South politician preaches
to the poor white man,
“You got more than the blacks,
don’t complain.
You’re better than them, you been born
with white skin,” they explain.
And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game.

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the
governors get paid,
And the marshals and cops get the same,
But the poor white man’s used in the
hands of them all like a tool.
He’s taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
‘Bout the shape that he’s in
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game.

From the poverty shacks, he looks
from the cracks to the tracks,
And the hoof beats pound in his brain.
And he’s taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide ‘neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain’t got no name
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game.

Today, Medgar Evers was buried from
the bullet he caught.
They lowered him down as a king.
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He’ll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game.

In early 1954, Medgar Evers applied to the then-segregated University of Mississippi to study law. When his application was rejected, Evers became the focus of an NAACP campaign to desegregate the school that would later culminate in the 1961-62 case of another student, James Meredith. By this time, Evers and his family were living in Jackson, Mississippi and he became the first field secretary of the NAACP in that state. He traveled throughout Mississippi recruiting new members, organizing voter-registration, protesting unequal social conditions, and boycotting companies that practiced discrimination. Evers soon had a high profile as an activist, and that made him a threat to the power structure in Mississippi, and also a target.

Shot in the Back

On June 12, 1963, just past midnight, Evers drove up to his Jackson home, parking under the car port, the kitchen door to his house a short distance away. Evers that night had attended a group meeting at New Jerusalem Baptist Church, while his wife Myrlie and his children watched President Kennedy’s televised speech — a speech that focused on the racial tensions in Birmingham, Alabama, where violent clashes between protesters and police had been going on for the past two months. As Evers got out of his car, he grabbed a bundle of T-shirts that were to be handed out the next morning to civil rights demonstrators. He only took a few steps away from his car toward the kitchen door when he was shot in back. The bullet tore though his body and went into the house where his wife Myrlie and their three children were. “Medgar was lying there on the doorstep in a pool of blood,” said Myrlie. “I tried to get the children away. But they saw it all — the blood and the bullet hole that went right through him.” Medgar Evers was 37.

On June 19, 1963 in Washington D.C., Evers was buried at the Arlington National Cemetery, receiving full military honors. More than three thousand people attended. It was the largest funeral at Arlington since the interment of John Foster Dulles, former U.S. Secretary of State in 1959. On June 23, 1964, Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the White Citizens’ Council and Ku Klux Klan, was arrested for Evers’ murder, but it would take decades before justice was finally served in the case.

“Oxford Town”

Back in New York’s Greenwhich Village, Bob Dylan had generated some commercial interest with his folk music and performances at local coffee houses, and had begun recording. In 1962, he released his first album, titled Bob Dylan. By then he had also written songs such as “Blowin in the Wind” and “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall,” which were labeled “protest music” by some since they touched on issues of the day, including civil rights. Some of Dylan’s music keyed specifically on civil rights controversies of that time. In 1962, for example, he wrote “Oxford Town” — a song about the riots that occurred in Oxford, Mississippi after James Meredith became the first black student to be admitted to University of Mississippi.

“Oxford Town”
1962

Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Ev’rybody’s got their heads bowed down
The sun don’t shine above the ground
Ain’t a-goin’ down to Oxford Town

He went down to Oxford Town
Guns and clubs followed him down
All because his face was brown
Better get away from Oxford Town

Oxford Town around the bend
He come in to the door, he couldn’t get in
All because of the color of his skin
What do you think about that, my frien’?

Me and my gal, my gal’s son
We got met with a tear gas bomb
I don’t even know why we come
Goin’ back where we come from

Oxford Town in the afternoon
Ev’rybody singin’ a sorrowful tune
Two men died ‘neath the Mississippi moon
Somebody better investigate soon

Oxford Town, Oxford Town
Ev’rybody’s got their heads bowed down
The sun don’t shine above the ground
Ain’t a-goin’ down to Oxford Town

The small town of Oxford was the university’s main campus and on September 20, 1962, it became something of battleground, as U.S. Marshalls had been sent there under direct order from President John F. Kennedy to ensure James Meredith’s enrollment and protection. Rioting ensued; two were killed and numerous students were injured. Dylan’s “Oxford Town” focused the events surrounding the campus riots and Meredith’s enrollment there, and also the larger civil rights movement then unfolding. “Oxford Town” was written by Dylan in October or November 1962 and first recorded on December 6, 1962. He is said to have performed the song at appearances in the fall and winter of 1962 and 1963, including a Carnegie Hall concert in October 1963. The song also appears on Dylan’s second album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

Music Player“Oxford Town”-1962

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Back in New York, Dylan continued to perform in Greenwich Village, as well other cities during 1963, and also a few television shows. On May 12, 1963, Dylan sparked controversy when he walked out of a rehearsal for a scheduled appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Dylan wanted to perform “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” but was informed by CBS Television’s “head of program practices” that the song was potentially libelous to the John Birch Society. Rather than comply with the censorship, Dylan refused to appear on the program. He did perform several days later with Joan Baez on May 18, 1963 at the Monterey folk festival in California. His second album, Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan was released at the end of May 1963.

Pete Seeger performing in Greenwood, Mississippi.

Following the murder of Medgar Evers on June 12th, 1963, Dylan was moved to write a song about the incident, which he titled “Only a Pawn in Their Game.” In Mississippi that summer, there were voter registration drives underway in various communities, one of which was Greenwood, Mississippi. It was here that Dylan visited on July 2, 1963 after an overnight flight. He performed there before a small gathering of civil rights workers and did the song “Only A Pawn in Their Game” and others. Pete Seeger, who had been there for a few days already, also performed at the Greenwood gathering.

Joan Baez & Dylan in August 1963 at the historic ‘March on Washington’.

Elsewhere that summer, Dylan would also perform his songs, including those with the civil rights themes, at numerous performances. At the July 26, 1963 Newport Music Festival, he performed “Only A Pawn in Their Game” and did duets with Joan Baez, some in small group sessions. On the main stage near the end of the festival, the songs “We Shall Overcome” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” were performed with a larger group that included Dylan, Baez, Pete Seger, the Freedom Singers, and Peter, Paul and Mary. In late August 1963, at the historic “March on Washington,” Dylan sang “Only A Pawn in Their Game”, among others, at the Lincoln Memorial — where Dr. Martin Luther King made his famous “I Have A Dream” speech. Nor would Dylan end his songwriting of civil rights-related music with his 1963 Medgar Evers tune.

Hattie Carroll’s Death

Dylan also wrote and recorded a song in late October 1963 entitled, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” The song first appeared on Dylan’s 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin.’ However, he performed the song live very soon after he had first written it. The song provides what is believed to be a generally factual account of the death of 51 year-old African American barmaid named Hattie Carroll. She was struck by a wealthy young tobacco farmer from Charles County, Maryland named William Devereux “Billy” Zantzinger — named “William Zanzinger” in Dylan’s song. For his crime, Zantzinger served a sentence of six months in a county jail. In 1963, Charles County, Maryland was still strictly segregated by race in public facilities such as restaurants, churches, theaters, doctor’s offices, buses, and the county fair. The schools of Charles County, for example, would not be integrated until 1967, four years after Hattie Carroll was killed.

“The Lonesome Death
Of Hattie Carroll”

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gath’rin’.
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder.
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain’t the time for your tears.

William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland,
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling,
In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking.
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain’t the time for your tears.

Hattie Carroll was a maid of the kitchen.
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn’t even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level,
Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
That sailed through the air and came down through the room,
Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle.
And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger.
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain’t the time for your tears.

In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all’s equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain’t pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught ‘em
And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom,
Stared at the person who killed for no reason
Who just happened to be feelin’ that way without warnin’.
And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished,
And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance,
William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence.
Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now’s the time for your tears.

Reportedly, the main incident occurred at a white-tie Spinsters’ Ball at the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland in early February 1963. A drunken Zant- zinger arrived at the hotel carrying a toy cane — a cane later described by Time magazine as “a wooden carnival cane that he had picked up somewhere.” At the Emerson Hotel, Zantzinger assaulted at least three of the hotel workers: a bellboy, a waitress, and, at about 1:30 in the morning of February 9th, barmaid Hattie Carroll. She was 51 years old, the mother of ten children. Zantzinger — then 24 years old and about 6′-2″ — struck her after she did not bring his bourbon quickly enough.

When Zantzinger and his party arrived at the hotel that night, he was already drunk and had earlier assaulted employees at a Baltimore restaurant, also using his toy cane. At the hotel Ball, however, he continued to be abusive, calling a 30-year-old waitress a “nigger” and hitting her with his cane. Shortly thereafter he started in on Hattie Carroll when she didn’t bring his bourbon immediately, cursing her — calling her a “nigger” and a ” black son of a bitch” — and hitting her on the shoulder with the cane. He also attacked his own wife, knocking her to the ground and hitting her with his shoe. Hattie Carroll meanwhile, told co-workers she felt ill after being hit and verbally abused, and then collapsed. She was hospital- ized shortly thereafter and died eight hours later. Her autopsy showed hardened arteries, an enlarged heart, and high blood pressure. A brain hemorrhage was the reported cause of death.

Zantzinger was initially charged with murder. His defense was that he had been extremely drunk and said he had no memory of the attack. His charge was reduced to manslaughter and assault, based on the likelihood that it was her stress reaction to his verbal and physical abuse that led to the intracranial bleeding, rather than blunt-force trauma from the blow that left no lasting mark. On August 28, 1963 Zantzinger was convicted of both charges and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.

Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963.

Time magazine, covering the sentencing, noted:

“In June, after Zantzinger’s phalanx of five topflight attorneys won a change of venue to a court in Hagerstown [50 miles or so west of Baltimore], a three-judge panel reduced the murder charge to manslaughter. Following a three-day trial, Zant- zinger was found guilty. For the assault on the hotel employees: a fine of $125. For the death of Hattie Carroll: six months in jail and a fine of $500. The judges considerately deferred the start of the jail sentence until September 15, to give Zantzinger time to harvest his tobacco crop.”

Bob Dylan, meanwhile, had been following the case in the news, and reportedly wrote the song in Manhattan, sitting in an all-night cafe. He recorded it on October 23, 1963, when the trial was still relatively fresh news, and incorporated it into his live performances. Dylan also performed the song on Steve Allen’s network television program soon after its release. A studio version of the song was later released on January 13, 1964 and it also appears on Dylan’s 1964 album, The Times They are A-Changin’. But by then Dylan had begun moving away from protest and folk music.

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Dylan, with guitar, in the early 1960s somewhere in the south -- quite possibly Greenwood, MS, July 1963. Photo, www.bobdylan.com

Dylan, by virtue of his early 1960s protest music, had become something of a civil rights icon and protest leader — at least in the eyes of many civil rights workers at the time. But he soon moved to take himself out of that role, feeling restricted and pigeon- holed by the designation. In December 1963, three weeks after the assassination of John Kennedy and four months after the March on Washington, Dylan was the invited guest of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee at their annual Bill of Rights dinner. There, Dylan was to receive the Tom Paine Award for services to the cause. But in accepting the award that evening, and after some heavy drinking, Dylan signaled his frustration with the protest role, finding it a burden and a limit on his creativity. For some, this was Dylan marking the end of that involvement; expressing his rejection of his role in protest politics and of folk musician in that genre. It would be something of a pattern for Dylan whenever the outside world tried to define him. In mid-1964 he reportedly said to writer Nat Hentoff: “Me, I don’t want to write for people anymore — you know, be a spokesman. From now on, I want to write from inside me …I’m not part of no movement… I just can’t make it with any organization…” Then came Dylan’s embrace of electric music at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1965, which left many of his fans and colleagues in shocked disbelief. Yet the change in style, like his speech at the civil rights award dinner, would be “Dylan being Dylan,” following his muse, and rejecting outside labels, especially when others would try to impose some definition on who he was or what his music meant.

In any case, while Dylan the musician continued to move on to new musical forms and genres — as he does to this day — his contributions to protest music are fact, remain significant, and have become legend. Dylan’s protest songs of the early 1960s did make an important contribution for many in the civil rights arena and beyond. Dylan’s contributions to protest music are fact, remain significant, and have become legend. “He was a folk-singer writing during a time when popular song focused on ‘Moon-June’ sentimentality and vacuous ditties,” wrote Robert Chapman in the late 1990s on why Dylan was important to civil rights in the early 1960s. “At the time it was unheard of for a young white songwriter to compose the kind of songs that he did, and he knocked down some serious barriers as to what was thought possible within the parameters of popular music.” In addition to “A Pawn in the Game,” “Oxford Town,” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol” mentioned here, other protest and civil rights-related songs he wrote include: “The Times They Are A-Changin'”, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, and “The Death Of Emmett Till” (a song about the a young Chicago boy beaten to death on a visit to Mississippi in 1955 for whistling at a white woman). And of course, there is also “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Another photo of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger at the July 1963 Greenwood, MS gathering.

Although “Blowin’ in the Wind” is regarded generally as a protest song about peace, war, and freedom, it became something of an anthem for the civil rights movement. Upon first hearing the song in the 1960s, other musicians involved with civil rights, such as Marvin Gaye and Mavis Staples of the Staples Sisters, were quite impressed. Staples, in fact, said she was amazed at how a young white man at that time could write something that captured the frustration and aspirations of black people.

“Blowin’ in the Wind,” however, was not made famous by Dylan, but by folk group Peter, Paul and Mary. Albert Grossman, who then managed Dylan, also managed Peter, Paul and Mary. Their version of the song, released as a single in 1963, sold 300,000 copies in the first week. By mid-July 1963, it was No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart and had sales exceeding one million copies. But it was Dylan’s songwriting that shone through on this and other songs of that era.